ON THE DEATH OF THE BISHOP OF ELY
WRITTEN IN THE AUTHOR'S SEVENTEENTH YEAR
My lids with grief were tumid yet.
And still my sullied cheek was wet
With briny tears, profusely shed
For venerable Winton dead,
When Fame, whose tales of saddest sound,
Alas! are ever truest found,
The news through all our cities spread
Of yet another mitred head
By ruthless Fate to death consigned-
Ely, the honour of his kind!
At once a storm of passion heaved
My boiling bosom; much I grieved,
But more I raged, at every breath
Devoting Death himself to death.
With less revenge did Naso teem,
When hated Ibis was his theme;
With less Archilochus denied
The lovely Greek, his promised bride.
But lo! while thus I execrate,
Incensed, the minister of fate,
Wondrous accents, soft, yet clear,
Wafted on the gale I hear.
66 Ah, much deluded! lay aside
"Thy threats and anger misapplied!
"Art not afraid with sounds like these
"To offend whom thou canst not appease?
"Death is not (wherefore dream'st thou thus ?) "The son of Night and Erebus;
"Nor was of fell Erinnys born
"On gulfs where Chaos rules forlorn :
"But, sent from God, His presence leaves
"To gather home his ripened sheaves,
"To call encumbered souls away
From fleshly bonds to boundless day,
"(As when the winged Hours excite
"And summon forth the morning light)
"And each to convoy to her place
"Before the Eternal Father's face.
"But not the wicked:-them, severe
"Yet just, from all their pleasures here
"He hurries to the realms below,
"Terrific realms of penal woe!
Myself no sooner heard his call, "Than, 'scaping through my prison wall, "I bade adieu to bolts and bars,
"And soared, with angels, to the stars, "Like him of old, to whom 'twas given "To mount on fiery wheels to heaven. "Boötes' waggon, slow with cold,
Appalled me not; nor to behold "The sword that vast Orion draws, "Or even the Scorpion's horrid claws. "Beyond the Sun's bright orb I fly, "And far beneath my feet descry
Night's dread goddess, seen with awe, "Whom her winged dragons draw. "Thus, ever wondering at my speed, "Augmented still as I proceed, "I pass the planetary sphere, "The Milky Way-and now appear "Heaven's crystal battlements, her door "Of massy pearl, and emerald floor. "But here I cease. For never can "The tongue of once a mortal man "In suitable description trace "The pleasures of that happy place; "Suffice it, that those joys divine "Are all, and all for ever, mine!"
NATURE UNIMPAIRED BY TIME
Ан, how the human mind wearies herself
With her own wanderings, and, involved in gloom
Impenetrable, speculates amiss!
Measuring, in her folly, things divine
By human; laws inscribed on adamant
By laws of man's device, and counsels fixt
For ever by the hours that pass and die.
How?-shall the face of Nature then be ploughed Into deep wrinkles, and shall years at last On the great parent fix a sterile curse? Shall even she confess old age, and halt, And, palsy-smitten, shake her starry brows? Shall foul Antiquity with rust, and drought, And famine, vex the radiant worlds above?
Shall Time's unsated maw crave and ingulf
The very heavens that regulate his flight?
And was the Sire of all able to fence
His works and to uphold the circling worlds,
But, through improvident and heedless haste,
Let slip the occasion ?-So, then, all is lost-
And in some future evil hour yon arch
Shall crumble and come thundering down, the poles
Jar in collision, the Olympian king
Fall with his throne, and Pallas, holding forth
The terrors of the Gorgon shield in vain,
Shall rush to the abyss, like Vulcan hurled
Down into Lemnos, through the gate of heaven.
Thou also, with precipitated wheels,
Phoebus, thy own son's fall shall imitate,
With hideous ruin shalt impress the deep
Suddenly, and the flood shall reek and hiss
At the extinction of the lamp of day.
Then too shall Hæmus, cloven to his base,
Be shattered, and the huge Ceraunian hills,
Once weapons of Tartarean Dis, immersed
In Erebus, shall fill Himself with fear.
No. The Almighty Father surer laid
His deep foundations, and, providing well
For the event of all, the scales of fate
Suspended in just equipoise, and bade
His universal works, from age to age,
One tenor hold, perpetual, undisturbed.
Hence the prime mover wheels itself about
Continual, day by day, and with it bears
In social measure swift the heavens around.
Not tardier now is Saturn than of old,
Nor radiant less the burning casque of Mars.
Phoebus, his vigour unimpaired, still shows
The effulgence of his youth, nor needs the god
A downward course that he may warm the vales;
But, ever rich in influence, runs his road,
Sign after sign, through all the heavenly zone.
Beautiful as at first ascends the star
From odoriferous Ind, whose office is
To gather home betimes the ethereal flock, pour them o'er the skies again at eve,
And to discriminate the night and day.
Still Cynthia's changeful horn waxes and wanes
Alternate, and, with arms extended still,
She welcomes to her breast her brother's beams.
Nor have the elements deserted yet
Their functions: thunder, with as loud a stroke
As erst, smites through the rocks and scatters them.
The East still howls, still the relentless North
Invades the shuddering Scythian, still he breathes
The winter, and still rolls the storms along.
The king of ocean, with his wonted force,
Beats on Pelorus; o'er the deep is heard
The hoarse alarm of Triton's sounding shell;
Nor swim the monsters of the Ægean sea
In shallows, or beneath diminished waves.
Thou, too, thy ancient vegetative power
Enjoyest, O earth! Narcissus still is sweet,
And, Phœbus! still thy favourite, and still
Thy favourite, Cytherea! both retain
Their beauty; nor the mountains, ore-enriched
For punishment of man, with purer gold
Teemed ever, or with brighter gems the deep.
Thus in unbroken series all proceeds;
And shall till, wide involving either pole
And the immensity of yonder heaven,
The final flames of destiny absorb
The world, consumed in one enormous pyre!
AS IT WAS UNDERSTOOD BY ARISTOTLE
YE sister powers, who o'er the sacred groves
Preside, and thou, fair mother of them all,
Mnemosyne! and thou who, in thy grot
Immense, reclined at leisure, hast in charge
The archives and the ordinances of Jove,
And dost record the festivals of heaven,
Eternity!-inform us who is He,
That great original by nature chosen
To be the archetype of human kind,
Unchangeable, immortal, with the poles
Themselves coeval, one, yet everywhere,
An image of the god who gave him being?
Twin-brother of the goddess born from Jove
He dwells not in his father's mind, but, though
Of common nature with ourselves, exists
Apart, and occupies a local home.
Whether, companion of the stars, he spend
Eternal ages, roaming at his will
From sphere to sphere the tenfold heavens; or dwell
On the moon's side that nearest neighbours earth;
Or torpid on the banks of Lethe sit
Among the multitude of souls ordained
To flesh and blood, or whether (as may chance)
That vast and giant model of our kind
In some far distant region of this globe
Sequestered stalk, with lifted head on high
O'ertowering Atlas on whose shoulders rest
The stars, terrific even to the gods.
Never the Theban seer, whose blindness proved
His best illumination, him beheld
In secret vision: never him the son
Of Pleione, amid the noiseless night
Descending, to the prophet-choir revealed;
Him never knew the Assyrian priest, who yet
The ancestry of Ninus chronicles,
And Belus, and Osiris far-renowned ;
Nor even thrice-great Hermes, although skilled
So deep in mystery, to the worshippers
Of Isis showed a prodigy like him.
And thou, who hast immortalised the shades
Of Academus,—if the schools received
This monster of the fancy first from thee,-
Either recall at once the banished bards
To thy republic, or, thyself evinced
A wilder fabulist, go also forth.
OH that Pieria's spring would through my breast
Pour its inspiring influence, and rush
No rill, but rather an o'erflowing flood!
That, for my venerable father's sake
All meaner themes renounced, my muse, on wings
Of duty borne, might reach a loftier strain.
For thee, my father! howsoe'er it please,
She frames this slender work; nor know I aught
That may thy gifts more suitably requite;
Though to requite them suitably would ask
Returns much nobler, and surpassing far
The meagre stores of verbal gratitude:
But, such as I possess, I send thee all.
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